Getting misty eyed over a MMO: EverQuest veterans unite!

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Ahh... there's nothing like rolling through an MMO for the first time. Sure, there's a lot of folks out there who had their first taste with UO, but I'd wager that for a lot of Goodjers, EQ was their first experience with this engrossing, addicting, and life-altering genre.

So who played? What did you play? Any favorite memories? How deep did your addiction run? Let's remember this classic (that's still running to this day!) and reminisce about corpse runs to Crushbone or those epic raids for ph4t le3wtz!

(Excuse me if the kids these days no longer use terminology like phat lewtz or l33t. I've been out of the game for a while now. )

As for me, I played a half-elf rogue on the Morell-Thule server. I picked the half-elf cause he was ruggedly handsome and a rogue cause I liked the idea of wearing all black. Pretty trivial stuff, and if I would have known I would've sunk years into the game, I would have probably thought about it more deeply. Haha...?

I have a lot of mixed feelings about the game. I started playing the game late in high school, and while it didn't totally dominate my life during those three years I played, it came pretty close. I ended up joining a guild in my mid 50s and, after a couple years of growing and raiding almost daily, we eventually become the premier high end guild on my server. It was an absolute blast tackling all of the different encounters and conquering them one by one, but I really did end up sacrificing a lot of for the game. But still... I look back on the game fondly. It was really cool being there from the ground up and watching us grow into "the" guild on the server.

Favorite memory? Downing all of the gods in the fourth or fifth expansion, Plane of Powers, with my guild. We were the first guild on our server to do so, and it felt pretty great conquering the high end game, when a couple year before, we were still struggling with a lot of the Velious encounters. It was all pretty much downhill from there, which in restrospect, is an okay thing. I can't imagine playing the game to this day... yeek.

I also have a lot of fond memories playing with my dad when we were both n00bs. My dad was the one that actually got my hooked to the game and it was pretty much our bonding experience through my late teens. I eventually ended up passing him in level (cause, you know, he had a job and everything :lol:) but for years, EQ and what was happening with our avatars was always a topic of excited conversation for us. Good times...

My favorite memory was an early one. It was the excitement of running from Freeport to Qeynos at an extremely low level. Not knowing where I was going was an awesome feeling.

Another great memory ... when I downed Broon for the first time. Or standing at the top of the aviak tower in the Karanas. Or the first time I saw an Evil eye in the beholder zone. Or seeing the hand that dropped the ring in the Unrest Basement.

Not to throw this off topic but I'm playing EQ2 right now (started a month or so ago) and saw Terrorantula yesterday. That was a great blast from the past

I played a druid because I loved to get around quickly (relatively speaking) and exploring. The druid with the combination of ports, spirit of the wolf, and camouflage allowed me to see many interesting places in the world. I also played as a rogue for similar reasons in WoW.

The other class that I played for a long time was an enchanter. I wanted to be desired by groups as well as the ability to solo high levels by charm kiting strong mobs.

My favorite memories tend to revolve around seeing rarely-visited locations such as the surface of Luclin (sp?) where there was no air, the plane with the druid god where I could run around unharassed, and accidentally getting in over my head a few times. There was a dungeon on Kunark that required a special key to get to which I have long forgotten the name. After working on getting the key I decided to check it out. I entered the dungeon and as soon as I loaded in I was in a room that had 4+ red mobs just barely out of aggro range. I was then very thankful that I could gate out and was thinking about how screwed I would be if I were a warrior/bard/ranger/etc.

EverQuest was my first MMO. I started playing back in May of 99 on the Innoruuk server. The wood elf ranger Elycion was actually the third of that name, the first two fell off Kelethin and died leaving me unable to find the corpses.

It quickly became an addiction for me. The game was everything I'd ever looked for especially since I had recently moved to a new state, had no local friends, and was home caring for my newborn son. My first (and only) all-nighter playing a game was a 36+ hour run in the Oasis of Marr committing lizard genocide to level quickly.

I took the explorer path early on, and ran from Kelethin to Erudin at level 5. It was fun being the only wood elf on that side of the world. I quickly drifted back to the Qeynos area and became a regular in Blackburrow. I made lots of friends there, including a barbarian warrior named Jarik who would be rather significant in my play later on.

I rapidly worked my way through the levels, hitting the usual spots. By the time I left the Temple of Cazic Thule I had nearly a full set of Rubicite armor, even the breastplate. I moved on to spend hundreds of hours in Lower Guk, and finally hit 50 killing the bugs in Solusek B. This was back in the day when a guide would show up in person to congratulate you and announce your level to the entire server.

I more or less stalled out at this point. There wasn't as much to do at 50, especially for someone without a guild. It was then that I re-encountered my old friend Jarik. He was the leader of a guild named The Pantheon and was playing a new character at this time as his main, an Erudite wizard he'd bought on Ebay named Gallenite. Yes, it was the same Gallenite who would later go on to lead both the EQ and EQ2 dev teams. At this point in time though he didn't yet work for Sony. Despite the eventual interpersonal conflicts that would tear it apart, The Pantheon was without question the greatest guild I have ever yet had the honor to be affiliated with.

The next few years were filled with high end raiding. The Pantheon eventually fell apart after being the first guild into Sleeper's Tomb (Oh the joy of being the only people on the server with Primal Velium weapons.) I moved on to Ashen Vendetta and continued the seven day a week hardcore raid lifestyle. My wife started playing with me at this point and we happily rampaged through Vex Thal together and proceeded on to the Elemental planes and downed Quarm in the Plane of Time. The horrific Gates of Discord expansion finally killed Ashen Vendetta, as it did so many other guilds. Sony even flew myself and 50 or so other people to San Diego in a desperate "Guild Summit" to try and find a way to keep us all happy with their game, it didn't work fast enough.

The number 2 guild on Innoruuk at the time was a group of people all of us loathed, so changing guilds to keep raiding wasn't possible without also moving servers. It just so happened that two of the people in Ashen Vendetta were the Sony Online Executive VP/General Counsel and his wife. In amazingly short order we found ourselves applying to a guild named Blades of Wrath on the Torvonnilous server and within 24 hours Andy had driven to the SOE offices and moved all our characters to Torv. We stayed with Blades of Wrath for over a year, clearing through Gates of Discord and making our way into the Citadel of Anguish where once again the content was buggy and poorly tuned. With WoW and EQ2 releasing right at this time, it was too much to tolerate. Blades of Wrath was gutted as core members quit the game, and my wife and I followed suit.

Two years later we gave EverQuest another go. It kept us entertained for over a year, but progression in that game requires a level of dedication that we can no longer offer to it. It's a marvelous game to this day, but not one that's friendly to people with families and other demands on their time.

I have many amazing memories of EQ. The experience of my first MMO is something no other game is ever going to equal. It wasn't all sunshine and roses though, as for a good while I was far too neglectful of my wife and family while I spent all my free time hooked into the game. It's my great fortune to have married such a good woman who could show such patience with me until I realized what I was doing to my family and mended my ways.

<--- Teneman Bowsmith, wood elf ranger of the Erollisi Marr server, checking in. And I second DeThroned's favorite memory re: the very first low level run from Freeport to Qeynos. That was so much fun that later on a few friends and I started a guild called the Travel Guard and made it a point to help lower level folks on that and some of the other long distance treks.

The Chessboard in Butcherblock Mountains. The Aviak Treehouse in South Karana. The Diving Board in Lake Rathe. The minotaur hero rampaging in Steamfont Mountains. The locked door and well of doom in Befallen. The mystery of Pyzin/Varsoon and others in Qeynos Hills. The mystery of the clickable orbs in Ak’anon. The tree city of Kelethin (and the piles of dead newbies underneath). Kithicor Forest at night. The wooden bridge between North and West Karana. The hags in the Estate of Unrest. Lower Guk. The creepy named evil eyes in Beholder’s Gorge. The narrow, orc and gnoll besieged pass of High Pass Hold. The spaceship temple of Rodcet Nife and his sacred Koliandl fish in Qeynos. Fippy-frakking-Darkpaw and Queen Kliknik in the Qeynos newbie yard. Ambassador D’vinn and Emporer Crush in Crushbone. Hunting Hill Giants for plat in Rathe Mountains. Lockjaw, Sand Giants, and spectres in the Oasis of Marr.

The Chessboard in Butcherblock Mountains. The Aviak Treehouse in South Karana. The Diving Board in Lake Rathe. The minotaur hero rampaging in Steamfont Mountains. The locked door and well of doom in Befallen. The mystery of Pyzin/Varsoon and others in Qeynos Hills. The mystery of the clickable orbs in Ak’anon. The tree city of Kelethin (and the piles of dead newbies underneath). Kithicor Forest at night. The wooden bridge between North and West Karana. The hags in the Estate of Unrest. Lower Guk. The creepy named evil eyes in Beholder’s Gorge. The narrow, orc and gnoll besieged pass of High Pass Hold. The spaceship temple of Rodcet Nife and his sacred Koliandl fish in Qeynos. Fippy-frakking-Darkpaw and Queen Kliknik in the Qeynos newbie yard. Ambassador D’vinn and Emporer Crush in Crushbone. Hunting Hill Giants for plat in Rathe Mountains. Lockjaw, Sand Giants, and spectres in the Oasis of Marr.

Holy crap man, that list is full of AWESOME. So many memories of that stuff!

The Chessboard in Butcherblock Mountains. The Aviak Treehouse in South Karana. The Diving Board in Lake Rathe. The minotaur hero rampaging in Steamfont Mountains. The locked door and well of doom in Befallen. The mystery of Pyzin/Varsoon and others in Qeynos Hills. The mystery of the clickable orbs in Ak’anon. The tree city of Kelethin (and the piles of dead newbies underneath). Kithicor Forest at night. The wooden bridge between North and West Karana. The hags in the Estate of Unrest. Lower Guk. The creepy named evil eyes in Beholder’s Gorge. The narrow, orc and gnoll besieged pass of High Pass Hold. The spaceship temple of Rodcet Nife and his sacred Koliandl fish in Qeynos. Fippy-frakking-Darkpaw and Queen Kliknik in the Qeynos newbie yard. Ambassador D’vinn and Emporer Crush in Crushbone. Hunting Hill Giants for plat in Rathe Mountains. Lockjaw, Sand Giants, and spectres in the Oasis of Marr.

Played a Wood-Elf Ranger on Veeshan, and that list sums up all my memories. Especially the D'vinn and/or Emperor trains in the Crushbone tunnel. Can't even count how many times I got steamrolled by those.

Dying juuuuuust right in Blackburrow so that when my level 9 warrior's corpse hit the ground, it slipped through a crack and fell into the endless abyss beneath Norrath. A week later I started a character on Tarew Marr where my friends were, so it worked out for the best. The really fond memories, though, were what I listened to while I played: Barenaked Ladies, Limp Bizkit, and two animation roundtable discussions that Bob Cesca, Kevin Swearengen, and Joe Cartoon did back at the turn of the century. I've tried, unsuccessfully, to find archived copies of these shows.

Soloing the damn shark in the underwater zone with my druid, finally emerging triumphant with an Abalone Gorget to give to my other half's cleric, back when it was an uber item (plate armor neck piece with a big +Wisdom bonus, there wasn't anything else like it back then.) Damn little fish kept breaking my invis by nibbling on me.

Organizing and running a killer Hate raid, the first planes raid for the guild I was in at the time. My other half completed her purple armor set that raid. It went smooth as silk, followed by the two of us leaving the guild in disgust a few days later, political BS. That guild never did manage another planes raid before it finally self-destructed.

I stopped playing after Scars, before Luclin. Too many wasted years there, I actually poked my nose back in for a few days last year, and I shouldn't have. You can't go home.

I spent about 25 hours - yes, hours - camping that rare spawn alligator/crocodile in Innothule(?) Swamp for that rare drop quest item for some really cool quest reward as a druid.
And then I spent about another 25 hours camping the same rare spawn rare drop combo for the wife.

When we first started playing, it was magical. Ah, the barbarian starting zone, how I loved you!
The shine was already off the apple by the time I did the 'gator camp - TWICE! - but that pretty much killed my enthusiasm for the game. Even Necros and whatever their version of DKs was couldn't fix it. And those guys were fun, but not enough. Besides, DAoC was calling.

Steam: duckilama Battletag: DuckiLama#1806T.Rex is more impressive than a cockroach, but that doesn't mean it aged better. - CheezePavillion

When we first started playing, it was magical. Ah, the barbarian starting zone, how I loved you!

Absolutely agreed. My first character was a barbarian, and Everfrost Peaks and Halas, with the wind roaring and the snow swirling, was definitely what first enthralled me. Mammoth hunting on the frozen river was so much fun that when I made my second character, a high elf enchanter, I ran her from GFay to Everfrost at level 4 to level up there. I loved that zone so much.

Even Necros and whatever their version of DKs was couldn't fix it. And those guys were fun, but not enough.

My last character before I quit was a shadow knight - they were really fun Little dark elf female (DESK!) looked bad ass in plate armor.

The entire Qeynos area was magical for me. I just loved leveling up characters in that area. I could probably run through all of those old Blackburrow quests from memory...

Worst camp: farming Druarg (I think?) for LGuk faction so I could get my wood elf mask. It was pretty much my go to spot when I was a bored level 60 with nothing to do. I must've spent an upwards of 20 hours in that zone to turn into a wood elf. But I was a pretty sexy wood elf if I do say so myself...

That was actually one of my favorite things about being a rogue: all those awesome illusion masks. I still remember getting my Dark Elf mask and causing trains all over the Dark Elf starting city when the mask effect would wear off. Oops.

Worst camp for me was Stormfeather for one part of the quest chain for the pirate's eye patch, he was a 30 or 36 hour spawn if I recall correctly.

That and getting a telephone call at 3:00 AM from one of the guild's clerics (NOT a person I knew in real life) to come help him kill Nagafen for his epic. If I recall correctly, that's about the time the wife said we'd had enough...

I started Everquest not long after it came out. My first experiences were stumbling around the forest, with no one who would talk to me in between camping good monsters and not tossing me a heal while they stood and watched me die. I struggled through the first few levels, however, and finally got to the point where I could start buying some nice spells.

Then I did the math on the prices and the amount of work I'd have to do to get them and promptly quit the game. I started Asheron's Call a few months after that and never looked back. Everquest at that time seemed to me to be designed to keep you logged in and playing for as long as possible, rather than a game you played to enjoy the game.

The two sides to every story are true and false, not yours and theirs. Facts are not political; lies are. - Deven Green (Mrs. Betty Bowers)

Wow, this brings back memories. Remember the days of player-interactive GM-led quests? Does any game do anything remotely similar anymore? I admit, at the time I didn't think they were all that exciting, but looking back, they did have a certain charm that seems larger now that I can sense their absence. UO had Lord British appearing in game (and getting assassinated), EQ had these GM-quests, and AC had the monthly game-changing plot stuff, but I'm hard pressed to recall anything else in the last, uh, 8 or so years. Lost art? Too expensive, probably.

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I was reading through a thread on another forum (F13 I think, I forget) the other day and was interested in some discussion on why EQ seemed so immersive. I cut and paste some choice bits that I think sums up what I think about the game too, and why it was so great despite its faults:

For me, and I bet a great many others, all SOE would have to do is take the current EQ's content -and- mechanics and redo the graphics engine and update the art to current standards. I know, its no small amount of work. But if you sold it as 'reliving the dream all over again' with exactly the same zones with the same exact layout, the exact same skill trees and a rejigging of loot tables to adjust for mudflation, and then just new art and animation, you'd probably have upwards of half a million instant customers at launch. By no means WOW numbers, so it might not get by the money people, but it would probably garner enough internets chatter to tack on a bunch more folks as well.

I'd go for EQ1's content with updated graphics. The feel of combat in EQ was really nice. It felt really solid. I didn't care for the downtime or the punishment of death. I also didn't care for game mechanics which encouraged camping. The loot would definitely need to be updated. I'd also want an updated questing system which didn't require me to type "What helmet?" "Which helmet?" "I want to make a helmet." "Helmet" and various combinations of crap just to get the NPC to realize you just wanted to make a damn helmet. If they fixed those things and just gave me EQ1 over again, I'd play.

Oh and I'd want them to leave out the vast majority of the crappy later zones. Ohhhhh, I see.

I guess at this point it's not really EQ1 anymore and more like a totally different game with EQ1's content.

...

Open wilderness can make for memorable player interactions. In Kunark I found a level 7 newbie human paladin swimming upstream in that long empty run-in to Lake of Ill Omen from Firiona Vie.

He was a genuine newbie who had started in Freeport, caught the boat to Butcherblock, caught the boat to Firiona Vie, fell off and died, retraced his entire journey and got to LoIO. He was running to Cabilis to meet a fellow newbie who started an Iksar. He thought the monsters might not see him if he stayed in the water (not roleplaying - he didn't know anything about the game - to him it felt like a safer thing to do).

He was having the time of his life. An adrenaline-fuelled adventure. I escorted him to the end of the river, explained KOS to him and warned him about Cabilis (he still wanted to go meet his friend), and petitioned for him to be awarded some kind of medal. Got a response from a guide who made sure he was OK.

...

Also, real worlds have large areas of completely unused and boring landscape, which is why they don't design that way anymore.

Gah! :headdesk:

Ok, buddy, this one's really annoying. The 'unused' 'boring' landscape is necessary to create a sense of depth, large space and vistas. The fact that you could, indeed, find one large patch of entirely unoccupied patch of turf in West Karana was very important to the sense of immersion EQ garnered.

Nowadays, its nearly as if there's a phobia against unused space. Even the 'vast' vistas of Conan's mountain zones are nearly completely occupied by folks. You can't walk for 20 seconds without running into someone else, entirely ruining the sense of being 'lost in the wastes'. Its f*ckING PATHETIC and it makes me STABBY.

...

Hey, when I had all day to play and a fat sack of weed, I loved nothing more than exploring for hours on end.

Now I have maybe an hour a night to play, the last thing I want to do is spend it trudging through some empty expanse of terrain having nothing happen, or looking in every building in a city to find the one quest npc I need to talk to.

You have a point, to a point. There's always a balance between playability and realistic immersion. It is true that in the bad ole days, you had to sacrifice upwards of 3 hours just to start and complete a quest, assuming the right NPC was up, you could gather your friends to defeat the MOB, etc, etc. I think its clear that those days are over in the industry. That said, I'm looking at Fallout3 as a potential model of content dispersal. There's stories lying around absolutely everywhere in that game. GF's been playing it for 4 months solid and is still finding letter and tapes for mini quests in the most remote backwaters of the map. The main quest line exposes you to the central travel lines for the game, but there's stuff for the wanderer. Its all about the options, as opposed to being shunted through the cattle chute-o-fun.

I kinda agree; I liked the open, sometimes empty landscape. I mean, I spent hours running through WKarana at level 6 with no SOW to get back to my corpse in Splitpaw (bound in Qeynos), so I'm aware of how big and slow it could be. But it makes for a more immersive world. Part of Brad's painful Vision(tm) was right. Keep the large zones. Keep the slow travel. Just update the graphics, remove the painful death penalty (or at a minimum remove the ability to de-level), remove the spellbook meditation, up the regen rates a little, and I'd be happy with original EQ (everything pre-Luclin). I think. Maybe.

played on ECI It ended up being the only server with a public raiding community that was one of the most powerful / annoying group of players since they could claim targets at whim with a active 200 raid force 24/7.

Shanar <-- First Wizard with Ice Comet I think people were annoyed when they found out I was 13
Bounced around to Arete and Ethereal Realms for guilds and then public raid force. Left after the POP expansion.

Best memory 36 hour plane of Air raid , stupid slow island hoping.

second best Going after phingeal for my staff underwater instance , it was brilliant and hasn't been done since.

I kinda agree; I liked the open, sometimes empty landscape. I mean, I spent hours running through WKarana at level 6 with no SOW to get back to my corpse in Splitpaw (bound in Qeynos), so I'm aware of how big and slow it could be. But it makes for a more immersive world. Part of Brad's painful Vision(tm) was right. Keep the large zones. Keep the slow travel. Just update the graphics, remove the painful death penalty (or at a minimum remove the ability to de-level), remove the spellbook meditation, up the regen rates a little, and I'd be happy with original EQ (everything pre-Luclin). I think. Maybe. :)

The only real pet peeve I have with Lord of the Rings Online is exactly your point about the empty landscape. There are many times where I'm passing through an area where it would honestly feel more realistic and immersive for it to be devoid of all but the occasional mob here or there. There are still plenty of places where it can remain densely populated with meatbags to slaughter, but it'd be nice to have wilderness areas that are largely empty of aggressive wildlife as well.

If they re-released EQ1 the way you just described, I absolutely would like it and buy it.

I kinda agree; I liked the open, sometimes empty landscape. I mean, I spent hours running through WKarana at level 6 with no SOW to get back to my corpse in Splitpaw (bound in Qeynos), so I'm aware of how big and slow it could be. But it makes for a more immersive world. Part of Brad's painful Vision(tm) was right. Keep the large zones. Keep the slow travel. Just update the graphics, remove the painful death penalty (or at a minimum remove the ability to de-level), remove the spellbook meditation, up the regen rates a little, and I'd be happy with original EQ (everything pre-Luclin). I think. Maybe. :)

The only real pet peeve I have with Lord of the Rings Online is exactly your point about the empty landscape. There are many times where I'm passing through an area where it would honestly feel more realistic and immersive for it to be devoid of all but the occasional mob here or there. There are still plenty of places where it can remain densely populated with meatbags to slaughter, but it'd be nice to have wilderness areas that are largely empty of aggressive wildlife as well.

If they re-released EQ1 the way you just described, I absolutely would like it and buy it.

It wouldn't survive today unfortunately . People can no longer grind out mobs solely for leveling , they need a defined quest line , I had it easy a wizard with quad kitting and it was still painful.

Oh the memories. I was a high elf wizzy on erollisi marr. It was the name generator that came up with nuean, which I have used in every game since.

I had a lot of good times in that game.

Do you remember Tradewinds, The Travel Guard, Fellowship of Honour or Crimson Eternity? All guilds I was in on EMarr. The name generator was also 95% responsible for Teneman, I think I tweaked a letter or two before accepting it.

I had a blast quad kiting in a duo with my druid and an enchanter friend. It was during the heyday of the Vellious expansion.

Sadly I gave my druid up to a friend. She only made it to the 40's. It wasn't grinding that was painful in EQ, it was the downtime and the hell levels (that they sort of got rid of, but sort of didn't)

There was something to be said about the combat. It was slow but there was a lot of tension which heightened the experience and has not been seen since.

I agree; I enjoyed the combat, I hated the forced downtime. Granted, when you were able to pull a good group together, there wasn't really any downtime except when the humans behind the computers needed it.